Burma: Govt stages pro-regime rally

Burmese security forces blocked off a sprawling section of Rangoon today for a government-orchestrated mass rally in support of the military regime, amid growing pressure on the junta to negotiate with the pro-democracy opposition.

Military trucks cut off access to a north-eastern suburb where people bussed in from other parts of the city gathered at a sports ground to shout pro-government slogans.

Officials said 120,000 people attended the rally. Many were offered cash incentives to attend, local officials said.

The regime, which violently crushed anti-junta protests last month, triggering condemnation on Thursday by the UN Security Council, has been organising similar rallies around the impoverished country to demonstrate popular support, but this was the first one to be held in Rangoon since the demonstrations.

The crowd denounced Western powers and the foreign media, whom the government accuses of fomenting the recent protests.

“Down with BBC! Down with VOA! Down with Radio Free America,” thousands chanted, in what has become a common refrain at pro-government rallies.

They also shouted: “Oppose internal and external destructive elements!” - using the junta’s lingo to refer to detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Western countries.

Local officials said they had been ordered by the government to round up delegations from various parts of the city to attend the rally, offering some of them payments of the equivalent of about 60c per person.

The opposition, meanwhile, still grappled with the human toll of the September 26-27 crackdown, in which thousands were arrested.

The government says 10 people were killed in the clashes and 2,100 people detained, but diplomats and dissidents say the toll is much higher and as many as 6,000 people were taken into custody.

Nyan Win, spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy, said as of Friday, 216 party members were in custody.

Allegations have emerged of beatings of protesters and deaths under harsh interrogation.

NLD party member Win Shwe, 42, died during interrogation in the central Burma region of Sagaing. He and five colleagues had been arrested on September 26.

Police told Win Shwe’s sister he died in custody of natural causes and had been cremated, Nyan Win said today.

The United Nations has spearheaded an international effort to push the military, which has ruled Burma since 1962, to enter negotiations with detained NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi and move toward democratic reforms.

The Security Council issued its first statement on Burma on Thursday, condemning the violence against protesters. The UN was dispatching a special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, back to Asia to co-ordinate efforts among regional capitals before holding his second meeting with the junta.

Burma, however, has rebuffed the criticism, declaring on Friday it would stick to its own plan to draft a new constitution and eventually hold elections – a plan critics say has no clear timetable and therefore is simply a ruse to allow the military to hold on to power.

The New Light of Burma newspaper, a government mouthpiece, ran a front-page commentary today claiming the population – who suffer from high rates of poverty and serious shortages of health care and education – backed the government.

“The entire population, including the various nationalities, has been overwhelmingly expressing their strong support for the fundamental principle and detailed basic principles to be enshrined in the new state constitution,” the paper said.

The fourth-ranking member of the junta, Prime Minister General Soe Win, 59, died on Friday in a military hospital after a long illness, relatives and state media said. Soe Win reputedly oversaw a 2003 attack on Suu Kyi from which she escaped unscathed.

His death, however, was unlikely to cause a ripple in the regime’s grip on power. Soe Win had little if any influence in policy-making as prime minister and was largely considered a figurehead for the junta.